Monthly Archives: January 2016

Islam is essential to the future of Judaism. Such a sentiment is not a modern political statement but the thinking of the thirteenth century Jewish leader Rabbi Abraham the son of Maimonides. Abraham thought that thirteenth century Judaism was in decline compared to the classical age of the Bible and Talmud and that it could only be restored by following contemporary Islamic practices, which in his mind, are reflective of original Jewish practices. He used his leadership, as best as he could, to create a pietistic revival seeking Sufi inspired divine illumination and contemplative prophecy.

Elisha Russ-Fishbane, assistant professor at NYU recently wrote a study Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt: A Study of Abraham Maimonides and His Timeson the fascinating Jewish leader Abraham Maimonides. Russ-Fishbane revisits the Arabic documents from the Cairo Genizah reading them afresh to give greater accuracy and detail in presenting the views of Abraham Maimonides. He relies on the prior work from Naftali Wieder, Paul Fenton and others, but subjects each document and fragment to a renewed scrutiny to offer us a wonderful rich account of this major figure in Jewish history. The monograph is fascinating and has many never before translated passages and excels in situating Abraham in his broader Egyptian context.

Abu-l Muna Ibrahim the son of Musa ibn Maymon, better known in English as Abraham Maimonides (1186-1237) was the only son of the famed Maimonides. Abraham became leader of Egyptian Jewry at age 18 after the death of his father in 1204 and officially ascended to the position of Ra’is (Nagid) in 1213 He was close to Muslim authorities and the Ayyubid Government, and became physician to Saladin’s brother al-Malik al-Kamal. Abraham was described by a Muslim contemporary as tall and lean with refined speech and pleasant manners.

General knowledge already in our history books about Abraham Maimonides focus on his defense of his father in the 1232 Maimonidean controversy, in which, he shows that religious rationalism and treating the Bible as metaphor are the true Jewish positions while the anti- Maimonideans have fallen prey to the spurious beliefs, under the influence of Christianity, to anti-philosophic and anti-rational positions and read the Bible as anthropomorphism.

Abraham is also known from his great and very large work Kitāb Kifāyah al-`Ābidīn (A Comprehensive Guide for the Servants of God). The original was a voluminous 2500, of which we only have several extent sections, but those sections themselves are almost full treatises. The most famous section in the wider Jewish world is his essay on the aggadic sections of the Talmud (printed as Maamar al odot derashot Hazal) where he treats the Talmudic stories as didactic allegory not based on a tradition, rather human insights, and they certainly they do not contain any truths about science or medicine. Paul Fenton, leading scholar of the era, insightfully states that in this work Abraham moved from his father prescriptive mode to a descriptive mode explaining the spiritual significance of Judaism in the same manner as al-Ghazzali did for Islam.

Many already know of Abraham Maimonides’ proposed changes to synagogue practice to enhance piety and bring the service more in line with Islamic piety. These practices include the washing of hands and feet before prayer, knelling in synagogue and arrangement in orderly rows like in a Mosque, full prostration when the Jewish custom is to bow, and prostration at the end of every Psalm in pesukei dezimra (pre-shema verses of praise) or paragraph of the Shema and raising one’s hands heavenward at the start of each paragraph.

Needless to say, that ordinary congregants of his time would not want such change or piety, hence leading families complained and even protested to the sultan that he was introducing “unlawful changes,” which is a serious charge in Islamic jurisprudence. In response, one Genizah letter states that Abraham produced two hundred letters of support in one controversy, which was the majority of the men in the community. (What would this controversy have been in the age of social media?)

Ayyubid Context

Abraham’s Sufism as not a lone voice but part of bigger trends. Nathan Hofer, a scholar of medieval Sufism, documents how after the fall of the Fatimid Empire in 1177, the new Sunni polity under the Ayyubids “founded and funded hospices to attract foreign Sufis to Egypt.” This lead to local charismatic Sufi masters appearing throughout Egypt and organized Sufi brotherhoods emerging in the urban centers of Cairo and Alexandria.

Russ-Fishbane is to be thanked for finally putting together Abraham’s pietistic aspirations and the cadre of other spiritual seekers in an era of growing Sufi piety. “For Abraham Maimonides, Judaism was at a crisis point, a spiritual nadir in its age-old exile.” Jewish revival was to be found in piety similar to the practices of the Sufis.

These pietists around Abraham saw themselves as bearers of a religious mission and harbingers of a spiritual revival. The pious individual ought to pursue an inner path to communion with God and the cultivation of regular fasting and solitary prayer under the guidance of an experienced guide and in fellowship with a spiritual fraternity. Pietists adorned themselves with special articles of clothing and encouraged chant and music in worship.

Pietists emphasized inner ‘states’ of consciousness (known as maqāmāt), and spoke of an intellectual-mystical enlightenment as prophetic attainment, thereby combining Maimonidean philosophy and Sufi mysticism. They used the language of luminescence in which the devotee was said to receive an influx of radiance (known as ishrāq al-anwār), a perception or vision of reality beyond the world of the senses.

For the Pietists, Post Talmudic practice reflects an exilic accreditation and decline that can only be restored by restoring the Jewish doctrines that are preserved in Islam but lost in exilic Judaism

Islam

Like his father, Abraham vigorously affirmed Islam’s status as a pure monotheistic religion that exerted a positive influence on Jews, encouraging them to maintain the purity of its faith against lack of piety and against the literalism of the Christian world. Beyond this, Abraham, considered Islam as both foretold by the Bible and affirmed by divine providence. (Compare this to those Jews today who see a divine providence to Christianity.)

The well-known talmudic law prohibited Jews from imitating the ways of the gentiles (known as hukkat or hukkot ha-goyim) according to Abraham did not apply to the contemporary Muslims.

Abraham’s view according to Russ-Fishbane: “Muslims and Christians pray and give charity, and no Jew would ever dream of banning such activities simply because they are also gentile practices. Why, he asked, should it be any different when considering practices like prostration and kneeling that were no less authentically Jewish than they were Islamic?”

Continuity

Pietist spirituality was gradually eclipsed by the path of Kabbalah, especially after the Safed revival, but continued for two hundred years in Egypt lead by five more generations of Maimonides descendants and is still practiced into the Nineteenth century among Jews in Iraq and Iran.

Returning to close this post on this pietistic ethos, Ovadiah son of Abraham son of Maimonides (1228-1265) in his Treatise of the Pool invites his pious reader to “imagine a certain person who, possessing a very old pool, desires to cleanse the latter of dirt and mire and to restore it.” Ovadiah considers this “an allegory alluding to the purification, cleansing and purging of the heart, the correction of its defects and failings and its being emptied of all but the Most High.” If one properly purifies the heart, then one will “progress therein until thou attains an even higher state which man’s tongue is incapable of describing.”

1) What was the Sufi influence on Abraham Maimonides?

Abraham Maimonides could not help but be influenced by Sufism (Islamic mysticism), in that piety and spirituality in medieval Jewish culture of the Near East and North Africa was saturated with the core ideals of Sufism.

The idea that the individual ought to pursue an inner path to communion with God, the emphasis on elevating the spirit over bodily desires (otherwise known as asceticism), the cultivation of regular fasting and solitary prayer – were widely cherished ideals among all religious groups of the medieval Islamic world.

Historians of Jewish philosophy often consider it remarkable that the (only) son of the great Maimonides – considered a champion of rationalism and moderation over against mysticism and asceticism – would so blatantly stray from his father’s course and choose the mysticism of Sufism over the sober ideals of philosophy. The truth, as usual, is much more complicated.

Philosophy, in its medieval guise, was no less dedicated to a personal liberation from physical attachments than its Sufi counterpart. Mysticism, for its part, did not always entail a rejection of reason. In practical terms, Jewish philosophers and mystics of the medieval Islamic world advocated a way of life that was remarkably similar in orientation.

Moses Maimonides was a case in point. His famous principle of moderation, known as the golden mean, has often been interpreted as a rejection of asceticism. In fact, it is more accurately a rejection of asceticism for those who do not understand its true goals, not a blanket condemnation. Abraham Maimonides, for his part, designated the ascetic life an “elevated path” suited only for those who have adopted the general calling of pietism, or hasidut, not for the Jewish masses.

In my book, I argue against a ‘rejectionist’ reading of Abraham Maimonides. While Abraham was not loath to disagree with his father when he believed it justified (which he did on several occasions), he understood the path of pietism as the logical extension of the core principles of his father’s doctrine. That said, Abraham made far more extensive use of Sufism’s spiritual terminology than his father ever did (although there is consensus that the latter was not devoid of a modest Sufi vocabulary of his own). Even more meaningfully, Abraham embraced concrete Sufi practices within his own pietist circle and openly praised his Muslim counterparts, at times holding them up as a model for his own community.

2) How did Abraham justify these adaptations?

While many Jewish intellectuals in the medieval Near East had, for more than two centuries, openly embraced Arabic literature and thought as a model for Jews, Sufism was different. As popular as Sufi pietism was among Muslims and minorities alike, for Jews to acknowledge as much could be viewed as a betrayal of the Jewish tradition. After all, Arabic letters and ideas did not pose a challenge to the Jewish religious establishment. The Arabic intelligentsia and literati did not represent the Islamic faith and were not infrequently cast as heretics by their own religious leaders. Sufism, by contrast, was by the thirteenth century an entrenched element of Islamic religious life from Persia to the Maghreb. How could a Jewish religious authority accept key Sufi rites for emulation within the Jewish community?

The answer goes to the heart of my argument in the book: that Islam was, paradoxically, essential to Abraham Maimonides’ vision of Judaism. Make no mistake, this was no postmodern vision of a pluralistic Judaism.

For Abraham, and for his followers, there was but one true faith. But that does not mean that Judaism, in their view, was monolithic. Abraham carefully distinguished between the authoritative religion of Israel, as enshrined in biblical and talmudic law, and what he called “exilic” practices, filled with problematic accretions to, and eliminations of, authentic Judaism.

In Abraham’s view, Islam borrowed heavily from original Jewish doctrines and rites (including such varied examples as monotheism and prostration), at the same time that Jews began to neglect many of their own traditions due to the hardships of the exile.

Herein lies the rub. For Abraham Maimonides, Judaism was at a crisis point, a spiritual nadir in its age-old exile. As he saw it, nothing short of a religious revival and a return to the abandoned roots of the religion could lift the Jews from the morass of exile and hasten the redemption. Abraham envisioned his brand of hasidut as an essential part of that revival.

If Islam (Sufism included) had incorporated a number of those lost traditions, the path to Jewish revival – and the path to messianic redemption – required a profound engagement with the religion of Islam. The result was a unique combination of inner Jewish traditionalism and an openness to the wisdom of a foreign religion.

3) How did it express itself in devotional practices?

The movement of hasidim in Egypt was decidedly practical in orientation. Egyptian Jewish pietism had very little taste for metaphysical speculation about the nature of God or the universe. Here, too, we see the footprint of Sufism.

The dominant models of Islamic mysticism to which Jews were exposed and which were adapted by the hasidim, emphasized inner ‘states’ of consciousness (known as maqāmāt), on the one hand, and a regimen of ascetic discipline and regular meditation, on the one other. Both the Muslim mystics and their Jewish counterparts described the inner states and the outer regimen as a journey (sulūk or maslak), undertaken by the individual wayfarer (sālik), under the guidance of an experienced guide and in fellowship with a spiritual fraternity. Abraham Maimonides extended the same language to the culmination of the path (described as a communion of the soul with the divine), which he aptly called ‘arrival’ (wuṣūl).

Because of their focus on praxis, the Egyptian pietists developed a sometimes fractious relationship with the larger Jewish community, parts of which viewed their reforms as a heretical imitation of Islam.

Pietists practiced forms of solitary meditation, adorned themselves with special articles of clothing, encouraged chant and music in worship, cultivated master-disciple relationships both as individuals and as fellowship circles – all of which were familiar features of Sufi mysticism and were viewed by their adversaries as an alien importation. In spite of vigorous efforts by Abraham and his colleagues to defend each of these reforms as original to Judaism, they were embroiled in a variety of controversies, all of which left a trail in the Cairo Genizah.

4) How did it express itself in liturgical synagogue life?

The Sufi-inflected regimen of asceticism and meditation, as remarkable as it is, was only the beginning of the Jewish pietist vision. As the leader of the entire Jewish community, Abraham Maimonides hoped that the pietist movement would become the vanguard of a much larger religious revival among his fellow Jews. For example, he promoted the idea (never realized) of pietists serving as permanent fixtures in the synagogue, available at any time for religious guidance and acting as spiritual mentors to other seekers.

Even more significant was a series of devotional reforms he hoped would be accepted in synagogue life. These include changes to key rites and postures of worship, such as the washing of hands and feet before prayer, prostrating when bowing, kneeling when sitting, reorienting the worshipers from sitting around the walls of the synagogue to sitting in orderly rows, and facing Jerusalem during the entirety of the prayer service. All of these bear the clear mark of the Islamic environment, more than any other Jewish movement before or after it.

The fact that prostration in worship was also practiced by Muslims was no more of a problem than the fact that facing Jerusalem in worship was also practiced by Christians.

The previous consensus among scholars was that Abraham instituted these reforms willy-nilly into Egyptian synagogues. My own position in the book is that the evidence actually points in the opposite direction. In other words, Abraham never actually imposed these devotional reforms on the Jewish community and we can establish for a fact (based on Genizah and other documents) that no synagogue ever adopted them.

The pietists did embrace them and were witnessed kneeling and prostrating both at fixed points in the service and even spontaneously when the spirit moved them. But, as Abraham testifies in a responsum, they observed such practices when praying in private residences (including his own) but were careful to refrain from them when visiting the main synagogues, in conformity with communal norms.

Abraham Maimonides spilled much ink responding to his critics one by one (all, alas, anonymous), all in the effort at public persuasion, but to no avail. He even bitterly observed that one of his father’s synagogue reforms had been accepted in spite of the fact that it lacked similar precedent in biblical or talmudic law. (The reform in question was Maimonides’ removal of the silent ‘amidah during sabbath and festival prayers. Worshipers who could were to pray in tandem with the hazzan. The rationale for the change was the perceived desecration of God’s name caused by members of the synagogue talking loudly during the hazzan’s repetition. The reform remained in place in Egypt until the sixteenth century.)

While we lack critical details on how much of the community supported or opposed Abraham’s efforts, one Genizah letter tells us that Abraham easily produced two hundred letters of support in one controversy, which our source tells us was the majority of the men in the community.

We also hear, importantly, that Abraham was criticized for welcoming women into his pietist prayer circles, mirroring the presence of women’s sections in the main synagogues but somewhat surprising given the intimate nature of these circles.

All of the evidence indicates that the chief opposition to the hasidim came from rival rabbinic figures, who disputed the legitimacy of the reforms, and certain communal judges.

5) Did Jews go to Sufi mosques? At that time, did they did do dhikr with Muslims?

We do have a report in the Genizah of a fourteenth-century Egyptian Jew who spent quite a bit of time with a local Sufi shaikh. We learn about this from the Jew’s wife, who bitterly complained to the head of the Jewish community (who happened to be Abraham Maimonides’ great-grandson and an avowed pietist in his own right), and pleaded with him to bring her husband out of the mosque and back home.

There may have been other cases like this (there is plenty of evidence of Sufi proselytizing), but if there were they haven’t been preserved. For his part, Abraham tells us that he witnessed key Sufi rites, although he does not tell us where. He does not disclose information on any personal contacts he had with Sufi leaders, although it is highly unlikely that he did not have any. He wrote of conversations he had with Muslim scholars and, given his interest in Sufi matters, we have every reason to believe that he was in conversation with Sufi shaikhs, even if this did not lead him into a mosque per se.

The Genizah preserves numerous examples of Sufi works copied by Jews during this period, some transliterated into Judaeo-Arabic and others in their original orthography, but none of them tell us who their owners were or where they obtained the originals.

Did Jew participate in dhikr sessions with Muslims? Apart from the fourteenth-century letter from the disgruntled wife, there is no evidence of this. But, given how prominent dhikr sessions were (and continue to be) for Sufis, it stands to reason that Jewish pietists at the very least adopted a similar rite. The truth is that, while a number of pietist writers used the term dhikr to refer to a practice of calling God to mind (its literal meaning), they did not create a formal communal dhikr session in imitation of their Sufi counterparts.

This is actually not as surprising as it sounds. After all, the pietists did not consider themselves to be imitating Sufism but reviving ancient Jewish practices long ago neglected by Jews and adopted by Muslims. Given that they could discover no parallel practice in the classical Jewish sources, they saw no reason to adopt it wholesale from Islam. But if dhikr as a form of meditative chant of the divine names was not incorporated by the pietists, dhikr as meditative recollection of the divine most certainly was, if not in collective fashion at least in solitude (known as khalwah).

6) How did he view Islam? And why did Hukkat Hagoyim not apply to Islam?

Like his father, Abraham vigorously affirmed Islam’s status as a monotheistic religion. In a couple of ways, however, he went even beyond his father in his praise of Islamic monotheism. It is true that, in his view, Islam derived its own monotheism directly from Judaism.

Yet he did not hesitate to declare to his fellow Jews that, in his day, it was Islam that exerted a positive influence on Jews, encouraging them to maintain the purity of its faith. His proof was to compare Jewish faith in Islamic lands with that in Christendom. While no Jew anywhere in the Islamic world, he chided, would dare question the fundamentals of the faith for fear of being the object of ridicule, a number of Jews in Europe did fall prey to spurious beliefs, under what he considered the less than salutary influence of Christianity in its anthropomorphic thinking.

Affirming Islam’s status as monotheistic had yet another consequence. A well-known talmudic law prohibited Jews from imitating the ways of the gentiles (known as hukkat or hukkot ha-goyim).

Abraham understood the scope of this talmudic ban to be limited exclusively to idolaters. Given that Islam was not idolatrous, any Islamic practices embraced by the pietists technically did not fall under the ban.

What is more, Abraham argued, there are good reasons to apply this ban with caution. Muslims and Christians pray and give charity, and no Jew would ever dream of banning such activities simply because they are also gentile practices. Why, he asked, should it be any different when considering practices like prostration and kneeling that were no less authentically Jewish than they were Islamic?

7) What is Abraham’s paradoxical concept of the Divine Blessing to Islam?

Jews from the second temple period and onward associated the Arabs with the descendants of the biblical Ishmael, a tradition eventually accepted among the Arabs themselves. This would become all the more significant when, by the seventh century, the Arabs and Ishmael became associated with the world’s newest religion. Genesis 16:10 records the divine blessing of the progeny of Hagar (mother of Ishmael) with the following words: “I shall greatly increase your descendants and they shall be too numerous to count.” Applying the traditional Jewish association between Ishmael and the Arabs, Moses Maimonides, in his interpretation of this verse, confined the application of this blessing to the future size of the Arab nation.

Abraham, in a subtle twist, preferred to read the divine blessing as referring not to the number of Arabs but to the religion of Islam per se, which on this reading was both foretold and affirmed by divine providence.

Yet, stunningly, Abraham’s vision of Islam did not end there. He imagined Israel and Ishmael to be locked in a spiritual combat of epic proportions, mirrored by their different fortunes on the world stage. When Israel was meritorious, he argued, Ishmael’s role was kept in check. When, however, Israel experienced a spiritual decline and was cast into exile, Ishmael’s fortunes would in turn begin to rise. This was not unlike the talmudic tradition of an inverse relationship between the fortune of Israel and that of Edom, later repeated and expanded by some medieval writers in Christian Europe.

Abraham Maimonides is the only writer known to me to apply this same narrative to the relationship between the children of Isaac and Ishmael.

All of this puts Abraham’s contention that Islam adopted core Jewish beliefs and practices, many of which were neglected by the Jews in the course of their exile, into greater relief. In Abraham’s rendering, the narrative of the inverse fortunes of Israel and Ishmael takes on messianic overtones. Only when, in the midst of their exile, Jews return to their neglected traditions will they experience an end to their sufferings and the onset of redemption. The paradox? The Jews must now relearn those original elements of their religion from Islam.

8) Why was Abraham striving for prophecy. What does it mean to be a prophet?

The Egyptian pietist movement referred to itself as the ‘path of the disciples of the prophets,’ which is to say that they envisioned prophecy as the object of their spiritual striving (the culmination of the path, to use the Sufi language of the spiritual journey). In a creative blend of Maimonidean philosophy and Sufi mysticism, the pietists spoke of this culmination in terms of an intellectual-mystical enlightenment, achieved through a process of self-discipline and solitary meditation. This enlightenment, in their view, was nothing short of prophetic attainment, reflecting their belief that a return of prophecy to the people of Israel was within their reach.

In the worldview advanced by Moses Maimonides and carried into practice by his son, there was an intimate connection between the renewal of prophecy and the onset of redemption. Abraham and his fellow pietists saw their role as helping to bring an end to the exile and stimulating the ultimate redemption of Israel. It is most likely for this reason that neither Abraham nor any of his colleagues harbored messianic fantasies of their own. They imagined themselves to play a pivotal role in the religious revival required for messianic redemption, without making promises or predictions as to when the awaited end would come.

9) What is the experience of luminescence?

Prophetic attainment, as it was understood by the pietists, did not end with its connection to messianic times. In line with another tradition of Maimonides, they conceived of prophecy as the ultimate intellectual-spiritual attainment possible for humanity. It was not the ethical-religious mission of an inspired preacher conveying the words of God, as it typically functioned in biblical accounts of the ancient prophets of Israel. Prophecy in its pietist context was a decidedly individual objective and (in so far as glimpses of it were attained by the pietists) played itself out primarily in individual experiences. Abraham no doubt envisioned the pietists as bearers of a religious mission and harbingers of a spiritual revival, but their first and primary objective as ‘disciples of the prophets’ was the perfection of their own humanity as individuals pursuing their personal journey on the path.

The hasidim described the prophetic experience by means of concrete images – some borrowed from Sufism, others from rabbinic Judaism. At times they used the language of luminescence (in the sense of enlightenment). The devotee was said to receive an influx of radiance (known as ishrāq al-anwār), a perception or vision of reality beyond the world of the senses. To someone familiar with the history of Sufism, the parallel to the concurrent Sufi school of illuminationism is quite striking, although the parallel does not extend far beyond the common imagery.

What is less evident is the fact that the language of illumination also appears in Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, a text of great importance for the pietists. The linguistic connection to his father’s Guide was not accidental for Abraham. For both men, the path to enlightenment was intellectual contemplation, during which the intellect was purified of its worldly sensation in order to catch a glimpse of the divine reality.

The goal of solitary meditation, for Abraham, was to rid the mind of all attachments and desires, allowing it to commune with God unimpeded – metaphorically speaking, to darken the outer senses so as to allow for an inner radiance, a taste (to use another of his images) of the world to come. What made Abraham’s approach innovative was less the content than the implementation and institutionalization of the prophetic ideal. The goal was to create a reproducible ‘path’ (i.e. the pietist regimen of asceticism, prayer, solitude, and contemplation) by which any devotee could make progress toward the ultimate ‘arrival’ of prophetic enlightenment.

10) Why did this approach seem to not leave a lasting impression?

Despite Abraham Maimonides’ public support of the movement in his capacity as head of Egyptian Jewry, pietism aroused considerable controversy in his lifetime – occasionally dividing family members and friends, as our Genizah sources testify – and continued to be a source of contention after his death in 1237.

Some of Abraham’s pietist colleagues: Abraham ibn Abi’l-Rabi’ (sometimes known as Abraham he-Hasid, which has caused confusion with Abraham Maimonides, who was also occasionally referred to by the same epithet!) and his brother, Joseph – the two brothers were referred to as leaders of the nascent movement before Abraham Maimonides’ rise to prominence. Another one we know by name was Hananel b. Samuel, who was Abraham Maimonides’ father-in-law. Some of the most interesting pietist tracts that survive in the Genizah do not preserve their authors’ names. We also hear about pietist prayer circles both in Fustat and Alexandria, but unfortunately most of the practitioners remain anonymous.

Some Jews, including descendants of the Maimonidean house, remained committed to the ideals of pietism for several generations and parts of Abraham’s classic work (called the Compendium for the Servants of God, or Kifāyat al-‘abidīn in Judaeo-Arabic) were still cited into the eighteenth century among Jews of the Arab world. Sadly, however, much of the work (which covered a wide range of Jewish law and ethics) was not cited and not preserved. This, in itself, was a consequence of the great controversy it stirred already in its author’s lifetime.

Another reason for the limited reach of Egyptian pietism was because of the language barrier. Unlike the Judaeo-Arabic works of Moses Maimonides and others before him, Abraham’s writings were not translated into Hebrew until modern times.

A final consideration for its limited duration even within the Islamic world was its timely competition. Pietist spirituality was gradually eclipsed by the powerful pull of Kabbalah, which has continued to be the dominant form of mystical piety prevalent among Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews to this day.

11) What is innovative in your book?

The fascinating world of Egyptian Jewish pietism has been discussed off and on by a number of pioneering scholars over the years, from Naphtali Wieder to Shlomo Dov Goitein to Paul Fenton. (Full disclosure: the latter was and remains an important mentor of mine in this field.)

As important as the contribution of these and other scholars continues to be, much work remained to be done in order to produce a comprehensive account of the movement – its historical foundations, its social and economic make-up, controversies and reactions within the community, its intellectual background (including its debt to Moses Maimonides), the nature of its spiritual agenda, its messianic aspirations, and its paradoxical relationship to Islam. My work made extensive use of Cairo Genizah documents, allowing for greater historical detail and less recourse to speculation in my reconstruction of events.

While thoroughly imbued with Jewish text and tradition, pietist practitioners were unapologetic in their respect (at times, even admiration) for the good found in the Islamic religion. Abraham acknowledged that Islam has had a salutary influence on Jewish belief and could yet play a meaningful role in the refinement of Jewish practice. Here, as elsewhere, Abraham drew from the well of his father, who famously wrote in his Eight Chapters: “Be attentive to truth, no matter who utters it.”

The famed Yeshiva Etz Hayyim in Volozhin (founded 1803) stands as an emblem of complete devotion to Torah study. According to Prof. Imamnuel Etkes, the yeshiva had three principle qualities when administered by Rabbi Hayim (d.1821). First, the Yeshiva in Volozhin studied Torah round the clock in mishmarot (watches or shifts) of study because the study of Torah maintains the world. Second, they had an uncompromising approach to the true and simple meaning of the text of the Talmud, avoiding pilpul. Third, was the value of fear of God (yirat hashem) defined as control of one’s passions, Kabbalah, and devotion. Rabbi Hayim wrote his work Nefesh HahayimThe Living Soul presenting this path.

Nefesh Hahayim should have been translated into English decades ago as a Torah classic, instead it had to wait until 2015 for its first serious translation by Avinoam Fraenkel, a Hi-Tech professional with rabbinical ordination, currently working as a product manager for a global business management software company. The translation entitled Nefesh HaTzimzum is published in two full volumes for a staggering 1600 pages. The first volume contains facing Hebrew and English pages as well as copious notes, explanations and an analytic index. The second volume has an entire book presenting Fraenkel’s theory of the concept of Divine tzimzum. It also has 400 pages of translations of almost all related texts written by the Vilna Gaon, Hayyim of Volozhin, Zundel of Salant. These ancillary texts are invaluable for any study of Nefesh Hahhayim.

The work is a labor of love by the translator and its shows. It is a wonderful translation and commentary on a difficult text showing his attention to detail and concern with educating the reader. The new translation should be owned by anyone truly interested in the world of the Mitnaggdim, Lithuanian Kabbalah, or Yeshivish ideologies. I highly recommend the two volumes and they belong in every Jewish library of classic texts. The book has sources, indices, outlines, and background resources forever changing the study of the work. Fraenkel deserves a thank you for his readable and well annotated volume. I would recommend Nefesh HaTzimzum for both classroom and yeshiva.

The two volumes focus on Rabbi Hayyim’s doctrine of tzimzum and that is why Fraenkel names the two volumes Nefesh Hatzimzum, in that he assumes that this is the major focus of the work. More striking is that according to Fraenkel, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi and Hayyim of Volozhim basically taught the same doctrine of Tzimzum and that the greats of the last two hundred years were mistaken in thinking that they seriously differed. To prove this point, the second volume has a 360 page presentation, a book unto itself, on Tzimzum and the world of the malbush. Translating the copious sources from Rabbis Immanuel HaiRikki, Yosef Ergas and Solomon Elyashiv in this exposition by itself is a major achievement increasing the texts of kabbalah available in English.

Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin’s Nefesh HaHayim consists of four official parts and an extra unnumbered section. The first part gives the book its title, in that it shows the amazing power of the human soul to affect the higher worlds. Man is said to be in the image of God, in that he affects the cosmos the way the Divine does. Mizvot draw down the Divine light and blessing and an influx of supernal holiness. Mizvot maintain the divine realm giving strength the sefirot. Thought is given precedence over action or emotion.

The second part is on the importance of the words of prayer and that one’s words should cleave above. Prayer should be done to give blessing above in the sefirotic realm and to draw down blessing from above. R. Hayyim also presents a doctrine in that every word of prayer has deep secrets instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly.

The third part is on tzimzum delineating how the infinite Divine relates to the finite world. The divine as revealed powers of the Divine name animates the world. However humans cannot access the infinite reaches of the divine, or even the divine in the natural realm around us, rather only the divine as manifest in Torah and mizvot.

The fourth part is on the greatness of Torah study. Torah study does not require a religious experience or emotional enthusiasm. Torah is divine speech that animates the world. Most of the time, those who open the book only know selected passages in the fourth part.

In addition, there is an unnumbered extra section offering a critique of Hasidic ecstasy and their emphasis of enthusiasm over correct performance of mizvot. While many saw the celebratory nature of Hasidic worship as dangerously reminiscent of Sabbatian excesses. The Vilna Gaon considered Hasidim to be heretics in their doctrine of immanence of God in all things.

In contrast to Hasidism, Nefesh HaHayyim situates Torah study over prayer and piety (not that it rejects those aspects).The most famous idea from Nefesh HaHayyim is the need to continuously learn Torah day and night. The traditional understanding of the need for Torah study as typified by Maimonides defines Torah study as the ability to teach and transmit, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch defines the need to be involved in Torah day and night as applying Torah to one’s home and family. Here in the Nefesh Hahayim, the definition to learn is measured in time, mandating that one actually maximize the time one learns because one’s learning because of its effect on the cosmos. Most contemporary Yeshiva students do not know that the source for this idea is the Zohar, not the Talmud, as developed by various 17-18th century pietistic works .

In the Volozhin yeshiva, students studied for on the average of approximately three to five years, sometime between the age of thirteen and nineteen, then in most cases off to work. They studied individually, not in chavruta study partners, mastering several Tractates on Talmudic civil law. Attendance at the lectures by Rabbi Hayim was optional. They did not study to be rabbis or even to be ordained as a rabbi, for that one would have to go elsewhere., rather for the pure study in the belief that study itself was important. Surprisingly, they did not follow the course of study outline in the Nefesh HaHayyim advocating the inclusion of Halakhic Midrash, Yerushalmi, and Midrash.

The widespread availability of the Nefesh Hahayyim will correct the widespread mistaken view that he, and Mitnaggdim, advocated Talmud study without concurrent emphasis on kabbalah, musar, and worship. I am glad the second volume has a translation of Rabbi Zundel of Salant, Tract on Prayer, because it shows what was actually practiced for prayer in Volozhin.

The Nefesh HaHayim has not played a large role in American Jewry or in the corpus of the scholar of mysticism Gershom Scholem. However, the work was translated into French in 1986 by Benno Gross and has played a large role in the modern French thought; where it is used to derive create Jewish ideas of cybernetics and semiotics. In several of his essays, Emamnuel Levinas uses Nefesh HaHayyim to present the idea of needed to transcend the self for infinite confrontation with Divine will as opposed to what he considers the self-obsession of Neo-Hasidism.

Fraenkel’s volumes, however, totally avoids anything academic or scholarly, or even historic. The volumes focus entirely on the Lurianic writings, hence, explicit citations of Rabbi Moses Cordovero and medieval Kabbalists are not treated, the influence of Ramchal is minimized, and the book lacks almost any historical context. I will leave it to others to provide a list of words that could have possibly had better translations, especially since a scholarly translation of the Nefesh Hahayim is planned from Harvard University Press (together with Tel Aviv University Press) as part of the the Hackmey Hebrew Classical Library. But in the meantime, this work is a great resource.

For Fraenkel, the secret of tzimzum is treated as a profound puzzle whose elegant solution is to be worked out with a chevruta. However, he relies heavily on the thought and writings of Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv (1841- 1926) and his Sha’arei Leshem Shevo V’Achlama. Fraenkel properly rejects the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s mistaken identification of the position of the Vilna Gaon with that of the 18th century kabbalist Immanuel Hai Rikki (who took tzimzum literally) and he equally rejects the approach of R. Yosef Ergas (who treats tzimzum as metaphor). In general, the late 18th and 19th century Eastern European positions agree that tzimzum is not true withdrawal or not occurring in the essence of God. But they differ on the role of acosmism, the access of the divine in the world, later day revelations, and what an individual can experience. Fraenkel’s harmonizing approach dissolves accepted differences.

The volume has no recognition of the scholarly work of Imamnuel Etkes, Mordechai Pachter, Tamar Ross, and now a wide cast of articles by younger scholars such as Ron Wacks showing the differences between Rabbi Schnuer Zalman and Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, between the Rabbi Hayyim and Rabbi Elyashiv’s Leshem, and between the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Isaac Luria. Raphael Shuchat recently edited an entire issue of the journal Daat on the topic of Lithuanian Kabbalah offering insight into the field and offering the reader bibliography in the footnotes. Elsewhere, Eliezer Baumgarten wrote an insightful article showing that the original plan of the Nefesh Hahayim was a triad of mizvot, prayer, and Torah study as a response to Hasidism, while the section on Tzimzum was needed only as an appendix for the other chapters.

1) What is your background in Kabbalah?

My first exposure to the world of Kabbalah was my introduction to Chabad, Sefer HaTanya and the concept of Tzimtzum at age 15. Since then the Chassidic classics in general and Sefer HaTanya in particular, have been a main area of personal focus for the last 34 years. This background exposed me to many Kabbalistic concepts which I researched further over the years and it provided me with a strong basis with which to approach study of Nefesh HaChaim.

In contrast to Sefer HaTanya and the Chassidic classics in general, Nefesh HaChaim is a unique work which substantiates every statement it makes by referencing many traditional Jewish sources in general, and Kabbalistic sources in particular. As a result, the highly structured presentation of Nefesh HaChaim itself is a gateway into the highly unstructured world of Kabbalah. Having now studied Nefesh HaChaim for many years, I discovered that it can only be properly understood by diving deeply into and beyond the sources that it references, and this process has, perhaps more than anything else, given me a point of entry into the diversity of Kabbalistic thought.

2) What motivated you to undertake this project?

There are many factors which inspired me to take on this project. A primary driver among others was a burning desire to more deeply understand answers to critical philosophical questions about life after my father’s sudden passing when I was an impressionable 15 year old.

The primary triggers for it were however practical ones. This project was born 5 years ago, when in preparation for regular study sessions with a study partner, I started preparing detailed outlines of Nefesh HaChaim. In constructing these, I discovered a new way of learning Torah that I had not personally previously encountered and when completed I was enthused to continue with this approach to Torah study by extending the detailed outlines to become a full blown translation and commentary. This became the single most intense and satisfying form of Torah study that I had ever experienced, as it was no longer acceptable to get the gist of what was going on and I had to understand the meaning and implications of every single word employed by Nefesh HaChaim.

After completing an initial draft of the translation, the project just naturally progressed as I had to continue my new found method of Torah study. I researched and translated all of R. Chaim Volozhin’s published writings which shed light on Nefesh HaChaim and on completion subsequently started to write about the concept of Tzimtzum which I identified as crucial.

Looking back, after a very humble start, this project progressed and transformed naturally beyond anything I would have ever dreamed possible. In retrospect, I can palpably see the hand of Divine Guidance which spoon-fed me with critical pieces of information at the specific times I needed to absorb them without being overloaded by them. Had I planned the end result at the outset, I am sure this project would never have happened. If you would have told me five years ago that it would end up becoming a Nefesh HaTzimtzum, I would have simply dismissed such a thought with hearty laughter.

3) How did you know when you were correct about the Kabbalistic concept of Tzimtzum?

Having entered into the Kabbalistic world from Chabad, it was natural for me to first look at the Chabad resources explaining the concept of Tzimtzum. A primary resource for this was a well-known letter, penned by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, zt”l in 1939 which delineates a 4 position approach to the concept and presents a picture of stark contrast between the views of the Vilna Gaon, the Baal HaTanya and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin.

When I started writing about Tzimtzum I had no basis to question the validity of this letter and used it as a primary source to explain what I understood then to be the positions of difference on the subject. This was to the extent that I even constructed an elaborate chart presenting the differences between Nefesh Hachaim and Sefer HaTanya as a result of this understanding.

By the time I had finished this, it transpired that I had written a book on the subject. Although I felt the presentation of difference was correct at the time, I was deeply bothered by the apparent fundamentally different positions between the Mitnagdim and the Chassidim. How could this be? How could the primary concept in Kabbalah, upon which all of the rest of the Kabbalah is based, be subject to such dramatically different interpretation?

To my mind it wasn’t that they were just different views within the boundaries of Judaism (which is how most approach this difference without properly thinking it through), but that difference over this principle of Tzimtzum has to result in different fundamental approaches to viewing Judaism – and this made me extremely uncomfortable.

It was then that through the quirks of Divine Providence, I was introduced to Rabbi Moshe Schatz and started learning with him. About a year after meeting him, during a marathon study session which lasted for 11 hours straight, I watched him suddenly be inspired with a new comprehensive understanding of the various positions on Tzimtzum, one that was generally consistent with both the Mitnagdic and Chassidic worlds. I immediately appreciated its truth and understood its implications, realizing that I had to rewrite my entire exposition on Tzimtzum from scratch as it was then obvious to me that there was no fundamental difference of opinion whatsoever between the Vilna Gaon and the Baal HaTanya.

I then spent the next 3 months rewriting my entire Tzimtzum thesis. It was an extremely painful process as I had to prove to myself that a 180 degree change in my view was indeed justified every step of the way and that it truly agreed with all the details I had amassed. I knew that it was correct when, using the lens of the new understanding, I could clearly see that it was consistently true everywhere I looked across Kabbalistic writings in general and the writings of Chassidut, the Vilna Gaon and the Nefesh HaChaim in particular.

I additionally knew it was correct as having previously held by and invested so much in attempting to understand the positions of difference, I could also now see and fully explain the extensive flaws in that understanding. It was also logically satisfying as it did not make sense in any way whatsoever to suggest that Chassidut had blazed a new separate trail to mainstream Judaism, which in effect is the implication of stating that there were positions of difference.

4) Your essay erases the Chassidic–Mitnagdic divide. How are they saying the same things?

The key point is that the Vilna Gaon, like the Chassidic masters, saw that the arena within which the Tzimtzum process occurred as only being in the level of malchut of any world level, including that of the highest level called the Ein Sof. The level of malchut is the lowest part of any world level and in fact is in a different dimension to it. This means that any change in the level of malchut of any world level as a result of the Tzimtzum process, does not impact the world level itself in any way. Therefore the first instance of the Tzimtzum process which occurred in the level of malchut of the Ein Sof, did not impact the Ein Sof in any way. Therefore, by extension, the Tzimtzum process does not change God in any way.

Once this is understood, key statements in the Vilna Gaon’s writings can be related to properly and in particular, it becomes very clear that when the Vilna Gaon refers to a removal of God as a result of the Tzimtzum process he is only referring to the removal occurring within the level of malchut, leaving all the levels above malchut intact and unchanged in any way.

On further study I also realized that key parts of likkutim (collected writings) of the Vilna Gaon and his students were also to be understood in this way. One prominent follower and expositor of the path of the Vilna Gaon is the Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv (1841- 1926), author of the Leshem Shevo V’Achlama, who was revered by the Chafetz Chaim and the Chazon Ish and was referred to by his student, R. Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, as “the greatest Kabbalist of the generation”. Amazingly, the Leshem, who notwithstanding the fact that he very strongly expresses his position in the historic debate on Tzimtzum which appears to be very much against the general Chassidic camp, on careful analysis of what he actually says on the topic it is abundantly clear that he most definitely agrees with the Chassidic understanding.

5) How did people not see this for 200 years, only to be discovered by you? Are you questioning those who came before you?

Most people, including some very great individuals, have been severely misled and confused by a smokescreen of difference which was contributed to by two key factors. Firstly, by terminology used by some key Kabbalists, whose historic context was misunderstood. Secondly, by a famous letter forged in the name of the Baal HaTanya which explained the Vilna Gaon’s position on Tzimtzum as arguing with the view of Chassidut.

Those who were severely misled spanned the entire Mitnagdic-Chassidic divide for the last two centuries and more recently included no less than the last Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rabbi Yoel Kluft, a prominent Mitnagdic Kabbalist who was the head of the Haifa Bet Din. They also included all positions that I had seen in the academic world, where most would present convoluted theories built on an inaccurate perception of difference around the concept of Tzimtzum.

However, not all were misled. Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, among many other prominent individuals, understood that the argument between the Chassidim and the Mitnagdim was not about the fundamental principles of Judaism. He wrote on the topic of Tzimtzum in 1938 that “in this generation in which there is a need to unite…it is fitting to publicize the fact that there are no differences of opinion in the essence of these issues”.

Unfortunately however, those who were severely misled, such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe in his 1939 letter mentioned above which was responding to Rabbi Dessler’s position, were much more vocal and their voice became the mainstream view which misinformed both the Jewish World and also the academic world.

6) What do you make of the dozens of authors who wrote about the difference between the two approaches?

This is explained by the Kabbalistic concept of “The Exile of the Torah”. As God, the Torah and the Jewish People are Kabbalistically referred to as being in Unity, therefore just as the Jewish People are in exile, so too is the Torah. This means that there is confusion and difference of opinion over all Torah concepts. It is the reason why there is so much debate and difference between the positions of our Rabbis over every conceivable minute detail of both the revealed parts of the Torah, such as Talmudic law, and also of the inner deeper parts of the Torah, Kabbalistic thought.

While the Jewish People is in exile and until the times of the Messiah, difference in all areas of Jewish Law and Thought will prevail, however as we draw closer to the times of Messiah, many of these areas will be gradually clarified. Ultimately in the times of the Messiah, there will be a “New Torah”, as the Vilna Gaon puts it, meaning that it will be new to us as a result of it having been fully clarified from all confusion and doubt.

The confusion of dozens of authors on the topic of Tzimtzum was therefore meant to be and has no bearing whatsoever on the stature of those individuals who were caught out by it. The current clarification of this topic is just a very small part of an enormous historic process.

7) What happened to the Ramak, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero? The Lithuanian Kabbalistic literature at many points clearly labels the views of the Vilna Gaon and R. Hayyim as the Ramak, you make that disappear.

My understanding is that there is no contradiction between the Ramak and the Arizal. In many respects the Ramak is a stepping stone to advance to the Arizal. The Ramak deals with the conceptual concept of difference of perspective as denoted by what is referred to as the World of Tohu and the concept of the sefirot. In contrast the Arizal builds on this and additionally deals with the concept of a unified perspective as denoted by what is referred to as the World of Tikun and the unity and wholeness of the concept of partzuf. The sefirot and partzuf views are not contradictory; they are just different ways of viewing the same underlying reality.

It is very clear that the Vilna Gaon and R. Chaim are both heavily invested in the concept of partzuf and the Arizal’s Kabbalah as evidenced, e.g. from the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on Sifra DeTzniyuta and Sefer Yetzirah. I would very respectfully suggest that those who differentiate the Ramak as a separate school which is distinct from the Arizal lack the bigger picture.

It is of interest to note that among a number of sources to support this there is a comment of R. Chaim Vital in his Sefer Hahizyonot (Mosad Harav Kook, 1954, entry 17, p.57) which describes a dream where he sees and questions the Ramak about the true path of the Kabbalah between him and the path of the Arizal. The Ramak answers him saying “the 2 paths are true but my path is the simple one for those entering into this Wisdom and the path of your master [the Arizal] is the inner and main one. I also now only study your master’s way in the [world] above”.

Avinoam Fraenkel speaking at Aish-LA

8) What happened to the Likkutim of the Vilna Gaon, many of them are clearly relevant to understand your sefer? Is your sefer, in the end, just according to the Leshem?

Of the Likkutim of the Vilna Gaon, the most important one which relates to the concept of Tzimtzum is arguably the one dealing with this topic which is published at the end of the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on Sifra DeTzniyuta. While many misunderstood this piece, on carefully reading it, it is very clear that it also only relates to the removal by the Tzimtzum process exclusively occurring in the level of malchut (as mentioned above). This is demonstrated in my Tzimtzum exposition where a detailed explanation is provided of how the Lubavitcher Rebbe misunderstood this piece.

In connection with the Leshem, I specifically chose to begin my Tzimtzum exposition with his explanation for two reasons. Firstly, because he provides the single most in-depth and extensive explanation of the Tzimtzum process that I have ever seen. Secondly, as mentioned above, as a result of explicit statements that he makes he was historically thought to have taken a strong anti-Chassidic approach to this topic and by fleshing out the detail of his explanation it becomes crystal clear that what he says is identical to the Baal HaTanya’s approach even though it seems that he may have personally thought otherwise. If I have done my job properly, anyone reading through my Tzimtzum exposition in detail should clearly see that the Leshem, Vilna Gaon, R. Chaim and the Baal HaTanya all very much independently entirely agree with each other.

9) What value does this have in a technological age? How do you relate this cosmology to the one that you work with in technology?

The process of coming out of exile in the run up to the imminent Messianic times as mentioned above, involves the clarification of all aspects of the Torah as the Torah also comes out of exile. The Leshem explains that every piece of information in this world, whether it is a new insight in Torah or even details of the scientific understanding of the world around us, has its specific time to be revealed. Until that designated time for each topic, confusion reigns and there is a lack of clarity.

It is common in the history of science for a topic to be suddenly discovered simultaneously and independently by a number of individuals. The concept of Tzimtzum is no different. Every concept, both in Torah and of the natural world around us has its designated time for reaching clarity, and it appears that we have now reached the time for the clarification of a major part of the concept of Tzimtzum.

As we progress towards Messianic times, the Zohar famously predicted that there will be progressive explosive growth in both Kabbalistic and scientific knowledge from around 1840. The current clarification of the concept of Tzimtzum together with an increasing momentum in the awareness of general Kabbalistic thought is therefore no accident. So too, it is no accident that there is an explosion in our understanding of the world around us in this technological and information age.

The technological revolution has caused a tectonic shift in the way mankind views the world over the last 170 years or so. Working full time, as I do, in the burgeoning world of Israeli Hi-Tech, it is amazing to see first-hand, the wildly disproportionate contribution that the Jewish People in their Israeli homeland, the “Start-Up Nation”, is making to this accelerating process of wider technological development across the world stage – which is also no accident. The most significant part of the changes that are occurring is within human awareness of the nature of the world around us which has been enabled through scientific and technological advancement.

The development of a proper and deeper understanding of Kabbalistic thought also drives human awareness allowing mankind to be in tune with the nature of the Divine reality all around us. As the Zohar highlights, these areas of awareness are intrinsically interlinked and go hand in hand with one another. The increasing awareness of the nature of the world around us automatically provides tools for more deeply understanding the Kabbalah. As demonstrated in detail at the end of my Tzimtzum exposition, the Vilna Gaon’s outlook is that proper engagement in the scientific and technological understanding of the world around us as it develops, is a pre-requisite to be able to properly relate to and understand the inner depths of Torah and Kabbalistic thought as the world draws ever closer to Messianic times.